Baby Blue Bruins Have Grown Up in a Hurry

The shock absorbers are new, the power steering fluid has been changed, and those misfiring spark plugs are long gone.

Maybe it should come as no surprise that the ride has been so smooth for the UCLA baseball team one year after the Bruins blew a gasket, finishing with a .268 winning percentage that was the program’s worst since 1945.

When UCLA defeated Oregon State, 3-1, on Sunday in its regular-season finale, the Bruins’ lineup featured six freshmen and a pitcher who had spent the previous season at a junior college.

The infusion of newcomers, combined with a few reliable older components, has resulted in a striking transformation. One year removed from a 15-41 season that included a 19-game losing streak, the Bruins today will open play in an NCAA regional at Malibu.

Second-seeded UCLA (32-23) plays third-seeded UC Irvine (36-22) at 11 this morning at Pepperdine’s Eddy D. Field Stadium. The Bruins will try to defeat the Anteaters for the third time in three weeks, having won 8-4 on May 16 and 10-1 on May 23.

“I can’t say I saw this coming last year,” said senior outfielder Chris Jensen, who is batting .327 with six homers and 35 runs batted in after sitting out nearly half of last season because of a hamstring injury. “We had such a rough year that it was hard to have high expectations, especially since we were getting all these young guys.”

The “baby” Bruins are a big reason why UCLA has won 17 more games than last year and is making its first regional appearance since 2004. Only two NCAA tournament teams -- St. Louis and Jacksonville -- have had more pronounced turnarounds, each winning 19 more games than a year ago.

“We’ve put a young team on the field the majority of the year, and I can’t say enough how everybody’s responded,” said second-year Coach John Savage, whose first recruiting class was ranked fifth in the country by Baseball America. “We’ve gotten knocked down, but in the big picture we’ve always bounced back.”

The Bruins were 5-9 going into a game against Long Beach State on Feb. 28 after being swept in a three-game series by Cal State Fullerton. UCLA beat the 49ers, 6-3, and then swept a three-game series against nationally ranked North Carolina State in Raleigh, clobbering the Wolfpack by a combined score of 25-8.

That kick-started a stretch in which the Bruins won 27 of 41 games to finish third in the Pacific 10 Conference, behind Oregon State and Arizona State.

“That was huge for us,” freshman shortstop Brandon Crawford said. “We got our confidence up.”

Crawford has a team-high 74 hits and a .320 batting average while starting every game. Freshman catcher Ryan Babineau did not commit an error en route to earning All-Pac-10 first-team honors, and freshman third baseman Jermaine Curtis hit .390 in Pac-10 play, ranking fourth in the conference.

“They don’t play like freshman,” Jensen said. “Those guys are making big plays and getting big hits in key situations and are playing above their age. It feels like we have an older team even though we don’t.”

Newcomer Dave Huff has also provided veteran stability. The junior, who pitched for Savage as a freshman at UC Irvine before transferring to Cypress College, has gone 7-3 with a 2.82 earned-run average for the Bruins and could be an early pick in next week’s amateur draft.

Huff and fellow junior college transfer Tyson Brummett have rounded out a starting rotation that also includes first-team All-Pac-10 selection Hector Ambriz, a junior who last year endured a season full of hard knocks.

The Bruins led the Pac-10 with a .977 fielding percentage, and their 3.82 ERA is on track to be the lowest since the team posted a 3.55 ERA in 1980.

Savage said as many as six freshmen could be in the lineup today when UCLA tries to take another step toward its first College World Series appearance since 1997. Don’t expect them to be intimidated by their surroundings.

“Most freshmen coming in would be a little rattled because they’re coming in and trying to make the transition from high school to college,” Huff said. “But the freshmen we have here are really mature, they really know what they need to do, play their game and are working hard to get after it.”